Mystery Lover...but overall a very eclectic reader. Will read everything from the classics to historical fiction. Biography to essays. Not into horror or much into YA. If you would like me to review a book, then please see my stated review policy BEFORE emailing me.
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Tuesday, June 7, 2016

The Tuesday Night Bloggers: Academic Mysteries Suggested Reading List

School
may be getting out for the summer, but the Tuesday Night Bloggers are
donning their academic robes and enrolling in a month of sinister summer
school. Throughout the month of June our group of Golden Age Detective
aficionados will be taking our examinations and writing papers on the
dastardly deeds of academe. Academic mysteries are one of my favorite
sub-genres of the field and so I will be collecting the papers here at
the Block. If you'd like to join us for a month of academic mysteries,
please stop by every Tuesday for group discussion and I'll add your
posts to the list. We focus on the Golden Age of crime
fiction--generally accepted as published between the World Wars, but
everyone seems to have a slightly different definition and we're pretty
flexible.

Fellow academicians, as we begin our investigations into the nefarious doings that masquerade under the flowing robes of the scholar and villains that lurk among the buildings of universities, colleges, and schools, I would like to provide a suggested reading list for current or future research. But first I should perhaps explain my criteria for an "academic" mystery. I realize that my definition may not precisely
coincide with a more accepted or expected definition. For my purposes an
academic mystery must have one or more of the following: a professor or
teacher acting as the primary (amateur) detective; a professor or
teacher as the victim, culprit or essential main character; and/or a
school or university setting. My love for this sort of mystery has
loaded my shelves with all sorts of unlikely looking specimens.
Sometimes I wind up with a real gem and sometimes I shake my head over
what I have bought just because the back cover mentions Professor
So-and-So or Whatsit University. I have wound up with books from Michael Innes to Agatha Christie and Edmund Crispin.

Please know that my personal cut-off for vintage (as opposed to strict Golden Age) crime novels is 1960. That's arbitrary as all get out, but it's what I came up to fit my reading tastes. This list follows my vintage guidelines and represent books that I have either read or currently own. All links below are to my reviews for books read since I began blogging.

Edmund Crispin: The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944); Holy Disorders (1945); Swan Song (1947); and six more plus two short story collectionsGlyn Daniel: The Cambridge Murders (1945); Welcome Death (1954)Katharine Farrer: The Missing Link (1952); The Cretan Counterfeit (1954); Gownsman's Gallows (1957)

Alice Tilton (Phoebe Atwood Taylor): Beginning with a Bash (1937) [this just happens to be my very first review on the blog]; The Hollow Chest (1941) and six moreHillary Waugh: Last Seen Wearing (1952)

Wow, this is a...dauntingly impressive list, Bev! Really appreciate the work that's gone on here, as I'm not sure I have (or have read) too many books that qualify for this month's topic -- this gives me something to research!

I forgot about Timothy Fuller and his collegiate detective at Harvard -- Jupiter Jones (the first one!). I have all of them and never read one. I'll have to see if I can read some of these while away in Alaska. I have room for only three books. Decisions, decisions...